Sid Roth - The Antichrist's Location REVEALED
Sid Roth: Hello! Sid Roth here! Welcome to my world where it's 'Naturally Supernatural'! My guest, Joel Richardson, has such amazing insight into the 'end times'. The prophet Daniel in the 12th chapter talks about the end times. Explain what he says.
Joel Richardson: Well in the conclusion of this incredibly prophetic book the prophet Daniel made clear, in fact it was revealed to him by an angel, that all of the things revealed to Daniel, the primary message of this entire book would literally be sealed up until the end times. And he makes this very clear that when he's speaking about the end times he's saying the time when the dead, those that sleep in the dust of the earth are resurrected, this is talking about the end of the age that at that time the understanding of this book would be opened up to the church.
Sid Roth: And I can see how you've been hand-picked literally by God to give Revelation of the end time. In fact you were sitting among 7,000 people. Get this. He's sitting around among 7,000 people and the man that is speaking has a 'word of knowledge' but he starts out by even saying Joel's name. What did he say?
Joel Richardson: Well let me just back up a teeny bit and make mention of something else. Just before my wife and I met there was a prophetess that prayed over my wife and one of the things she said was she said your husband, you will marry someone that will have significant insight into the end times and he'll release new prophetic understanding concerning the end times to the church and to the world. And so my wife and I are sitting in this meeting. 7,000 people. A large civic center type of situation. In the very back. And before he spoke he said I wanna share a prophetic word in order to show that what I'm about to speak on is from the Lord. He called us out by name and then he spoke things to us that no man could know! Things that we'd been praying about. Things that only we knew that only the Lord, only God could reveal to a man and that gets your attention. And then one of the things that he said was he said that the Lord was gonna bring me into a season of divine Revelation which I knew intuitively was tied into this word about understanding the end times. And of course I had no interest in the end times. I'm an incredibly unlikely candidate. My heart has always been to I love sharing my Christian faith with Muslims and I love reaching out to the poor and I thought if I ever had a ministry that that's what it would be geared toward. But somehow the Lord has managed to bring together this love for Muslims as well as this call to speak about the end times and he's joined those two together.
Sid Roth: But what if everything we've been taught about in series like the 'left behind' or 'late great planet earth' the basic premises are wrong? What if? I believe God has raised up Joel. People that understand his teaching say for the first time the whole end time scenario makes total sense to me! Joel, in preparation for this you spend time in the Middle East. You have studied the scriptures from an Eastern, a Middle Eastern mindset. What difference does this make when you study the scriptures from that mindset versus the west?
Joel Richardson: One of the things that I try to emphasize whenever I'm teaching on these issues, particularly when I'm addressing Americans, is I try to address this issue of American centricity. This idea that we have as Americans, whether we articulate it or verbalize it or not we believe the world revolves around us. And we even, again we wouldn't quite come out and say it, we believe that the Bible was written primarily for Americans. What I'm trying to do is bring people back to the context of this book so they can understand that this book is first and foremost, is and always has been a Jerusalem, Israel and a Middle Eastern-centric book and that includes the subject of biblical prophecy. That the epicenter of all biblical prophecy is the Middle East so when we try to as westerners try to read our world view into the prophetic scriptures, the prophecies of the Bible, we often make mistakes. We read things into this context that don't belong. So if you're sitting in Jerusalem today the primary spirit that is coming against the Jewish people, coming against the people of God is the spirit of Islam. Now here in the west we have other spirits that we're contending with but we need to be careful not to read our world into the pages of this book.
Sid Roth: Now the thing that's so amazing to me is as you began studying and reading about what the Bible calls the anti-Christ and then in the Middle East in talking with Muslims and beginning to understand the one they consider to be their Messiah, they seem to be the same person!
Joel Richardson: Exactly. Exactly. What shocks a lot of people is that when you look at the basic template, the basic description of who the anti-Christ is in the Bible it is an exact description of the Islamic Savior, the Islamic Messiah figure. So in the Bible the anti-Christ is a charismatic leader, a military-political-religio us leader that rises up at the end of the age. He initially comes with a spirit of peace, a spirit of tolerance and unity for all faiths and he initiates a peace treaty with the nation of Israel and the surrounding Islamic nations. And then 3 and a half years into this peace treaty he violates that. He invades the land of Israel with the surrounding nations, these Islamic nations that are under his authority. And he literally comes against the Jewish people to kill them, to conquer them. He sets up his seat of authority in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount and the Bible says that the time that he has to do this is 7 years. In Islam their Messiah figure is said to come at the end of the age. They call him the Mehedi or in English we could just say the Mahdi. He comes at the end of the age to revive the Islamic empire that's been dormant for the past 80 plus years. He then invades the land of Israel to retake Israel for the Islamic world and then he establishes the seat of his authority, of world Islamic authority, from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and according to sacred Islamic tradition it says that the time period that he has to do this will be 7 years!
Sid Roth: I mean I think that is so phenomenal because I've always been told it's going to be something, someone that will emerge from Europe, from the European Union, the ten nations coming together. This is going to get interesting! Don't go away. It's going to be supernatural! Be right back after this word!
Sid Roth: Hello! Sid Roth here with Joel Richardson. And we just found out in the last segment that the one the moslems refer to as their Messiah has a perfect description of what Christians refer to as the anti-Christ! It's amazing how similar it is! Joel, in Matthew 24, it says, the Messiah says 'the love of, and in the Greek is says the love of 'most' will grow cold in the last days'. That's a pretty somber statement. The love of most will grow cold in the last days. Why do you believe that'll happen?
Joel Richardson: This is one of the most, in my opinion, one of the most terrifying of warnings in all of scripture because not only does it say the love of most will grow cold it also says that many will betray the faith and betray each other. And of course the end times will be a catastrophic cataclysmic time. But to put this in context in the 1970's there was a movement that swept through the United States called 'the Jesus movement' and that's affected this country, few people realize how much that affected all these hippies were coming to follow Yeshua and throughout the country this was a revival, a biblical revival. One of the primary underlying factors of this religious revival was the fact that Israel had become a nation and fulfilled the prophecies of the Bible. People when they look and they see that the prophecies of this book, unlike you know nostrAdamus or some other very vague prophecy, when they see that this book can predict things with accuracy, precision thousands of years in advance they come to recognize this book is true. Well likewise if the majority today of the church is believing that the anti-Christ is gonna come out of Europe and if they have all of these ideas about the end times that are perhaps flawed then likewise even as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy has affected people in a positive way during the 70's I believe that sort of the, the if the opposite takes place the potential that this has to shipwreck people's faith, to lead them into deep levels of disillusionment and confusion and lose faith in this book is tremendous. And so we need to when we look at this warning in Matthew 24 we need to take an incredibly humble approach to the prophetic scriptures and keep our eyes open.
Sid Roth: Okay. Islam talks about their Messiah is the perfect description of the Christian anti-Christ. What is Islam's description of Jesus?
Joel Richardson: And this is essential. This is an essential point. A lot of Christians when they find out that Muslims also believe that Jesus will return at the end of the age they get all excited and they say we have so much in common. What Christians don't realize is that what Islam teaches is that when Jesus returns he will essentially come back not as the Jesus of the Bible but as an Islamic prophet. That he will come back to tell the Christians of the world and those that follow him that you've had it wrong all along. That your Bible is corrupted. That he never claimed to be the Son of God. That he never died on the cross. The whole Christian religion is false. That Islam is the true religion. He will command Christians to become Muslims otherwise they will have no other choice but to suffer the death penalty. Beyond that Muslims teach that Jesus will come back as a muslim prophet to kill the false Jewish anti-Christ and to slaughter Jews in the land of Israel. So in a nutshell Muslims believe Jesus returns to abolish Christianity and to kill Jews!
Sid Roth: How about Daniel 2:43? How does that fit in?
Joel Richardson: Daniel 2, this is the prophecy about this metallic statue. One of the most essential prophetic passages in all of the scriptures! A lot of people believe that this is the foundation for this whole idea that the anti-Christ will come out of the Roman Empire.
Sid Roth: Right.
Joel Richardson: It's speaking of these legs of iron. It's all very complicated. But when we look at the biblical description, the criteria that the Bible lays out for us to identify this fourth empire it says that it will crush Babylon, think Iraq. Persia, think Iran. And Greece, think Turkey and Greece. The problem is the Roman Empire did not crush those empires. It conquered a little bit of some of them but in terms of Persia and Iraq, largely most of these regions were left untouched. The Roman Empire does not meet the biblical criteria. The Islamic empire does. And then when we look at Daniel 2:43 specifically of this fourth empire it says the kingdom will be 'mixed'. And in the Aramaic that word is 'Arab'. The kingdom will be 'Arav,' 'Mai Arav'. The same word for Arab is the word that we translate as 'mixed'. In ancient times the Arabs were known as 'the mixed peoples'.
Sid Roth: So why does everyone think the anti-Christ is going to come out of Europe?
Joel Richardson: Well again it's because of a misplaced interpretation of two key passages. And there's a huge wealth of passages throughout the Bible consistently that speak of the 'surrounding nations'. In the Hebrew it's the 'goy sabib,' the 'goyim sabib,' the nations that surround Israel that come against her in the last days. And you have dozens of passages that say this. But then based on two passages, Daniel 2 as well as Daniel 9, some point to Revelation 17, they form the foundation for their eschatology and believe that the anti-Christ will come from the Roman Empire and they ignore all of these other passages which are clear, which are consistent and easy to understand.
Sid Roth: Very briefly, what is the Islamic view of the one they call the anti-Christ?
Joel Richardson: Muslims also believe that an anti-Christ will come at the end of the age. They call him 'ad-dajall al-masih,' the imposter Messiah. He comes back as the Jewish Messiah who claims to be Jesus Christ, who claims to be God, the Son of God, who does miracles and he's followed by Jews. So when you look at the Book of Revelation when it says that the 'rider on the horse,' Jesus, has come back and then the kings of the earth gather together to make war against him and you think what has gotten into them? The Muslims have been set up by their own religion to believe that when Jesus returns that he will be the anti-Christ!
Sid Roth: Well you know I can see why 99% of the people that hear Joel teach on this area say for the first time I understand the end times. Don't go away. You're going to find out some amazing statements of orthodox rabbis about the end times. Be right back after this!
Sid Roth: Hello, Sid Roth here with Joel Richardson. And the wealth of information, I see why God has hand-picked this man to give us a Revelation of end times. But there's going to be a false unity that will occur in the last days we read about. And you told me the most amazing statement about a Hasidic rabbi in Israel. Tell me about that.
Joel Richardson: Well I've recently been in dialogue not only with some of the representative rabbis from the 'Sanhedrin,' which is a body of 70 Hasidic rabbis in Israel but also a very influential Turkish Islamic muslim leader named Adnan Oktar. I recently had the chance to visit with him in Istanbul and amazingly you have this muslim leader that is actually calling for the Jewish temple to be rebuilt. He calls it 'Solomon's mosque' or 'Solomon's palace'. Shortly after I visited with Adnan in Istanbul some of the representatives from the Sanhedrin met with him and after meeting with him one of the things that they came out in a joint statement was a call for the Temple Mount to become a 'house of prayer for all nations'. And you know when you listen to their dialogue the rabbI's regularly refer to God as Allah and they speak about worshipping the same God all under one Abrahamic umbrella. So there's an emerging unity. You know they have their clearly defined parameters but they see each other as brothers who all worship the same God.
Sid Roth: And obviously by the description of Allah that is not the description of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But I'm talking about that Hasidic rabbi. What did he say to you?
Joel Richardson: Well, not to me specifically. But Menachem fRoman, very influential rabbi in Israel, the founder of the tekoa settlement, he's written a letter to the government of Turkey and he's asked for a meeting between the religious leaders of Israel and the government leaders, political leaders of Turkey to come together to form and forge a Middle Eastern peace treaty that they can then submit to the surrounding nations. And what he has said is that Turkey is the only hope for Middle Eastern peace. That Turkey is the premier bridge nation, the only nation that can mediate between the Islamic world and the state of Israel.
Sid Roth: And that's probably why you talk about keep your eyes on Turkey!
Joel Richardson: For over 500 years it ruled the Middle East right up until 1924. Now in 1924 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secular reformer of Turkey abolished the office of the caliph, which is essentially the pope of the Islamic world but he's actually more than that. So the caliphate, the government of the caliph was abolished and since that time the Islamic empire has essentially been dormant. The Bible predicts this. It calls this 'the fatal head wound' that the 'beast' would suffer, the beast being the empire. And now that empire is reviving and everything looks like Turkey will emerge once again as the leader of the Middle East.
Sid Roth: You know when you put end time prophecy together with, with the Islamic world as opposed to the European world it just makes so much more sense!
Joel Richardson: Absolutely! And you know sometimes it's as if they're reading right from the script of the Bible and aDNAn oktar, this muslim leader that I met with, after I had been teaching for some time that the Bible predicted that Turkey would emerge as a regional leader, suddenly he comes out and he's calling for what he calls a Turkish-led Islamic union and there's these massive movements throughout the Middle East calling for a neo-ottoman empire in the Middle East! We've been concerned that Al Qaeda would revive a caliphate. Al Qaeda's not gonna do it. But Turkey very well may accomplish what Al Qaeda could not do.
Sid Roth: And you have another interesting Revelation from the prophet Micah about the Assyrian.
Joel Richardson: Well this is, this is one of the most basic prophecies about the Messiah in the Bible. In Micah 5 you have the prophecy of the Bethlehem-born Messiah. We all know this one. But if you read a little further it says that one of the primary things that this Messiah does, it says when the Assyrian, that's the anti-Christ, when the Assyrian invades our land and tramples into our borders that the Bethlehem-born Messiah would deliver us from the Assyrian. Now you have to ask yourself if you're a believer who takes the Bible at a face-value approach, you take it for what it says, if the anti-Christ is called the Assyrian, then is it more reasonable to conclude that the anti-Christ will come from the former region of the Assyrian empire or is it more reasonable to conclude that the anti-Christ will be Nicolae Carpathia from Romania or that he'll be from Germany or London?
Sid Roth: Now, now of course we're hearing all of this, this stuff which is kind of heavy. But there is so much exciting things going on by the supernatural power of the living God. Jewish people and Muslims are having supernatural experiences with the Messiah of Israel. Tell me about some Muslims.
Joel Richardson: Amen. First let me say this. Yeshua, a Jewish man will soon come back and he will take over the earth! This is the yearning of mankind. 'righteousness will cover the earth'. Before he does this, this is all. We're talking about the end times, we're not talking about the end of the world, we're talking about the beginning of the good stuff! We're talking about the day when all the things that we groan about, the child slavery, the sex slave trade throughout, the unrighteousness of the earth, the unrighteous leadership will be eliminated. Before he does that the Lord right now is reaching out and he's drawing Muslims to himself all over the Islamic world. Reports are coming in from missionaries and one of the primary ways that Muslims are coming to become followers of Yeshua is through supernatural dreams and Revelations. Yeshua himself is personally evangelizing Muslims. He hears their cry and he's calling them to himself.
Sid Roth: Briefly tell me one muslim story.
Joel Richardson: You know I just heard one recently. I believe it was in Joel Rosenberg, not to be confused with Joel Richardson, was telling the story of a woman who was praying. She read the scripture that says 'behold, I stand at the door and knock. If you open the door I will come in and sup'. She was praying about that scripture. She heard a knock on the door. She opened the door and there was a man in a white robe with holes in his hands and she said come on in. And Jesus himself came in, sat down, ate with her and taught her the truth about himself from the scriptures and she became a follower of Jesus.
Sid Roth: But based on your research this is not just an exception. This is happening to many Muslims!
Joel Richardson: Reports are coming in again from across the Islamic world. Missionaries are reporting this. I have a friend in Berlin right now who just about two weeks ago he was able to lead 9 Turkish Muslims to the Lord in one meeting. He prayed for them. They had various sicknesses. They were healed! Jesus healed them. They could not deny the power that he had in Yeshua, through Yeshua. They came to faith. He preached the crucified Christ of the Bible, not the false Jesus of the Koran.
Sid Roth: And the amazing thing is when these Muslims come to know God they have such a love for the Jew and Israel! This is where Romans 11:11 says that 'the gentile will provoke the Jew to jealousy'. What greater gentile than an Arab coming to faith!
Joel Richardson: Exactly. What a testimony when these Muslims who are raised on anti-semitism, the anti-semitism that is in their holy book, the Koran, and they have this hatred for the Jews. Suddenly they fall in love with Yeshua. They read the scriptures and they realize the Jews are God's people. That Isaac is my brother and they come to love Israel. They come to love Jews. This I believe is one of the primary ways that the Lord is going to use the gentile world to provoke his people, the Jewish people to jealousy that they will turn to him!
Sid Roth: That kind of a transformation could only come from through knowing the Messiah of Israel! Do you need that kind of transformation? I believe you do! It's time to tell God you're sorry for the mistakes you've made in your life. And you believe the king of the Jews, Jesus the Messiah, washes away your sins. Ask him to be your Lord. And ask him to live inside of you right now!